"Crazy Little Thing Called Love" | ||||||||
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Single by Queen | ||||||||
from the album The Game | ||||||||
Released | 5 October 1979 | |||||||
Format | Vinyl record (7" / 12") | |||||||
Recorded | 1979 | |||||||
Genre | Rockabilly | |||||||
Length | 2:42 | |||||||
Label | ||||||||
Writer(s) | Freddie Mercury | |||||||
Producer(s) | ||||||||
Queen singles chronology | ||||||||
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"Crazy Little Thing Called Love" | ||||
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Single by Dwight Yoakam | ||||
from the album Last Chance for a Thousand Years: Dwight Yoakam's Greatest Hits from the 90's | ||||
B-side | "Let's Work Tegether"/"Doin' What I Did" | |||
Released | 19 May 1999 | |||
Format | CD single | |||
Genre | Country | |||
Length | 2:22 | |||
Label | Reprise | |||
Writer(s) | Freddie Mercury | |||
Producer(s) | Pete Anderson | |||
Dwight Yoakam singles chronology | ||||
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"Crazy Little Thing Called Love" is a song by the British rock band Queen. Written by Freddie Mercury in 1979, the track is featured on their 1980 album The Game, and also appears on the band's compilation album, Greatest Hits in 1981. The song peaked at number two in the UK Singles Chart in 1979, and became the group's first number-one single on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US in 1980, remaining there for four consecutive weeks. It topped the Australian ARIA Charts for seven weeks.
Having composed "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" on guitar, Mercury played rhythm guitar while performing the song live, which was the first time he played guitar in concert with Queen. Queen played the song live between 1979 and 1986, and a live performance of the song is recorded in the albums Queen Rock Montreal , Hungarian Rhapsody and Queen at Wembley. Since its release, the song has been covered by a number of artists. The song was played live on 20 April 1992 during The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, performed by Robert Plant with Queen. The style of the song was described by author Karl Coryat as rockabilly in his 1999 book titled The Bass Player Book.
As reported by Freddie Mercury in Melody Maker, 2 May 1981, he composed "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" on the guitar in just five to ten minutes.
'Crazy Little Thing Called Love' took me five or ten minutes. I did that on the guitar, which I can't play for nuts, and in one way it was quite a good thing because I was restricted, knowing only a few chords. It's a good discipline because I simply had to write within a small framework. I couldn't work through too many chords and because of that restriction I wrote a good song, I think.